White House adviser's influence, power rare in Washington

ANALYSIS

Rove carved out rare role in West Wing

August 14, 2007|By Mark Silva, Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON -- Rarely has anyone who never won an election claimed so much power in Washington.

Yet Karl Rove was as well-known as almost any politician, his name inspiring both reverence and revulsion. So much so that when George W. Bush won a second term in 2004, he singled out Rove, his political maestro, for uncharacteristic praise, as the "architect" of the victory.

That moment, seen at the time by Rove and many other Republicans as the signal of a fundamental realignment in politics, might now be viewed as the peak of the recent conservative era. And a sign that Rove's increasing role in crafting West Wing policy, not merely politics, helped steer the Bush presidency to its troubled state.

Rove announced his departure Monday in the relatively friendly forum of the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal, underscoring his skill at the tactical advantage, telling his version of history, on his terms, in a way that reflected well on both Bush and himself.

His influence with the president rivaled that of Colonel House with Woodrow Wilson, Sherman Adams with Dwight Eisenhower or H.R. Haldeman with Richard Nixon, although he never had a lofty title. It came with controversy as well, with Rove a target of an investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, which resulted in no charges against Rove but damaged the White House operation. And he remains a target of Democratic congressional leaders attempting to get to the bottom of all the political machinations of an administration that has asserted sweeping presidential powers and privileges.

His resignation will not quiet the fury on Capitol Hill.

"I am realistic enough to know I am not going to stop them," Rove said Monday. "You've got a bunch of people up on Capitol Hill auditioning for Captain Ahab, and I'm Moby Dick."

Rove accumulated power, and he pushed its limits. Few presidential counselors have so clearly understood and performed the art of winning. His tactical brilliance was perhaps most evident in the 2004 campaign, when Rove helped engineer a surge in turnout in key states such as Ohio to ensure the president's re-election.

Nonetheless, with the dual roles of political and policy adviser that Rove had assumed in the Bush White House as deputy chief of staff after Bush's re-election nearly three years ago, critics say the art of governance still eluded a combatant who had abandoned college for campus politics and devoted a career to defeating rivals at all costs.

Rove, after the campaign of '04, thought he had helped forge a political realignment in America, that the GOP had fixed its hold on power for a generation. That belief stoked an even broader assertion of presidential powers and authority.

His vision was undone, however, by events beyond any one person's control, with the war in Iraq pushing American voters to Democrats in 2006, and Republicans now bemoaning their chances of winning the White House in 2008.

And for all of his vaunted political expertise, he had become personally entwined in some of the most damaging controversies of the Bush administration, from the administration's leak of a CIA operative's identity in 2003 to the White House's refusal to divulge more about its role in the firing of several federal prosecutors last year.

"Rove is going to go down in history as the model in presidential advisers," said Scott Reed, a GOP consultant in Washington. "He is smart and disciplined, and he had an amazing relationship with the commander in chief."

But governing, Reed said, "has been an area where the Bush administration has come up short, and Rove will probably get some of that blame."

Rove already has refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the firings. As with the refusal of other present and past players in the administration to testify, the White House is citing executive privilege.

The committee hasn't yet decided what to do about Rove's refusal to testify, but Democrats say Rove's resignation will not put an end to their inquiries.

Rove had appeared five times before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's name after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly criticized the Bush administration for manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Rove's attorney maintained that he had never divulged her name. But columnist Robert Novak, who first published Plame's name, later testified that Rove had been one of his sources.

"Karl Rove was an architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who is seeking his party's presidential nomination in 2008.

The president had insisted at the outset of Fitzgerald's investigation that anyone responsible for leaking the agent's name would no longer have a job in the White House. But there never was any circumstance under which Bush would fire Rove.